FMA made 'Picnic At Hanging Rock' based on another iconic Australian novel

FremantleMedia Australia is producing a drama series based on Richard Flanagan's novel that is set against the backdrop of WW2’s horrific Thai-Burma Railway.

FremantleMedia Australia is to adapt Richard Flannigan’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North into a high-end drama series, the company announced Tuesday. No broadcaster is yet attached.

Set against the backdrop of the horrific Burma Railway in 1943 and across the Pacific during World War 2, The Narrow Road to the Deep North about the cruelty of war, the tenuousness of life and ultimately the impossibility of love, through they eyes of Australian doctor and prisoner of war, Dorrigo Evans.

First published in 2013, Flanagan’s highly lauded novel won the 2014 Man Booker Prize, has sold in excess of a million copies in 42 countries, and is a bestseller in the UK, Australia, and the US.

“I am delighted that The Narrow Road to the Deep North is to become a major international TV series in this age of great television drama, promising the quality, the depth, and the occasional brilliance of which the form is now capable,” Flanagan said.

The new project follows the premiere of FMA’s latest drama series for Foxtel and Amazon Prime, Picnic At Hanging Rock, at the Berlin Film Festival and is set to launch in May down under.

Furthering the push into high end drama, FremantleMedia companies have secured the rights to Robert Harris’s latest novel Munich, are working with the multi-award-winning director Michael Haneke to produce his first ever TV series, Kelvin’s Book, recently secured commissions from BBC One for Euston Film’s The Dublin; and produced the latest Neil Cross drama Hard Sun, which launched on BBC One in the UK and Hulu in the US.